Tech solutions, transportation policy can collide

The transportation industry is increasingly locked into a collision course with technology — and that could be a challenge for traditional regulators.

As transportation officials work to ensure connected vehicles are safe for drivers, industry representatives are urging them to change their policy-making processes to reflect the quickened pace of innovation.

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“This industry has a history of coming up with good technological solutions, but of course product development times take a long time,” said Catherine McCullough, executive director of the Intelligent Car Coalition, at POLITICO’s Technology & Transportation Intersection event in Washington. “The policy challenge is to make sure those tech solutions are able to bloom.”

She pointed to the Department of Transportation’s ongoing work to address distracted driving, noting that since the agency began its work on the issue several new technological solutions for decreasing distractions in the car had already come to market.

But as technology unfolds, new distractions can surface. Mitch Bainwol, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, pulled out his own Google Glass and held it up as an example of how often technology introduces new devices that can end up in the car.

“It’s distracting, but it’s also a wonderful piece of technology,” he said, adding that it’s also something consumers demand.

Officials should work faster, but they should also take context into consideration, the panelists noted. Regulators should refrain from picking a specific policy solution before the technology has a chance to innovate, said Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

“We have no idea what the end game is going to look like,” Atkinson said. “The real risk is that regulators will preclude the kind of innovation we need because they’ll see one they like and lock us in.”

McCullough said that “picking winners and losers” had long been a strategy for transportation officials — but that the technology sector would be stifled if it were locked into a single route.

Legislators with jurisdiction over highway and traffic safety agreed that policymakers need to be aware of nascent technologies to ensure technology can achieve the benefits it aims to meet.

“We need to be alert of that and make sure that we allow technology to move forward, because it will transform the world just as the automobile did,” said Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.), who chairs a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on highways and transit.

Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), who chairs a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that oversees traffic safety issues, said new technologies would “inherently” make driving safer, but he warned that overregulation could stifle those benefits.

“We need to make sure our regulators have an understanding of technology — not only what technology exists today, but new emerging technologies,” he said. “We need to make sure that any rules and regulations that are passed in the name of auto safety does not in essence retard or stop the technology process that is going to make driving a lot safer in the future.”

In fact, discussions of distracted driving could be obsolete if automotive and technology companies successfully develop autonomous vehicles, said Leo McCloskey, senior vice president for technical programs at ITS America.

If people have the option, “they’d gladly not drive the car, especially in D.C.,” McCloskey said.

The panelists all praised the potential benefits of driverless cars. The potential opportunities have convinced major car makers and tech giants like Google to pour resources into the technology.

An October paper from the Eno Center for Transportation paper found autonomous vehicles could save $447 billion and 21,700 lives each year, by preventing the 90 percent of crashes blamed on driver error and reducing annual fuel consumption by 724 million gallons.

Even if just 10 percent of auto drivers switched to driverless cars, everyone would feel a measurable impact, McCullough said.

“These great autonomous technologies, they don’t have to fully penetrate the market in order for me to feel the benefit of them,” she said.

To achieve those technologies, however, regulators at the Federal Communications Commission will have to free up the necessary spectrum for car-to-car communication, Bainwol said.

Atkinson cautioned that cars might not need too much spectrum if regulators could find a way to share the dedicated bands. He said there would be a way for the transportation industry to share its spectrum, much in the way Wi-Fi signals are shared. But Terry said spectrum is vital for automotive safety and should be protected.

“We’ve got to fight to keep it, because car-to-car technology is going to rely on it for communication,” he said, adding that once it has been dedicated, “maybe we can share it, without jeopardizing automobile safety.”